eragon_sporkingsfandomcom-20200214-history
Talk:Epistle the Tenth/@comment-170.135.176.108-20151002213651
There are a few criticisms that can be retracted, IMHO... Disclaimer: I "liked" the series as an adrenaline oriented story, but it was indeed rather mary-sue-ish and I recognize a lot of the criticisms are valid. its not "fine literature", and some of the writing can be a bit adjectivy... but I did really enjoy the first 3 books. (I was sorry to learn when I read the 4th book that the series ends in such a literary disaster, IMO...) My first complaint to the critics is this: The star wars ripoff became the "faux star wars ripoff" in a clever plot twist that was clearly planned for by Paolini, and obviously none of you saw coming. If you're going to hammer Paolini for the star wars ripoff, man up and admit that you blamed him for unoriginality, followed the "obvious trope" yourself, and got rekt. I thought Paolini was not so clever when he planted the seeds (then my mother disappeared for a time, I thought, duh, that was obvious), and I applaude the double deception and yes, the originality of this plot twist. Secondly, although I thought Inheritance ended particularly badly, I applaud Paolini for digressing from the Mary Sue story line in the end. I'm fairly sure that a true Mary Sue ending would more likely have Eragon and Arya at least humping like rabbits... I have a lot of experience with people with ASD and this obviously colors my thinking, but I am predisposed to think (based on the sum of his writings, his interviews, and how his father and sister defend him), that Paolini shows signs of Broader Autism Phenotype. (To be very clear, this isn't autism, but the sort of "proto-autistic tendencies" that Jerry Seinfeld recently said that he may have.) I do not mean this as an insult. Paolini clearly departs from standard literary devices, but I do not believe it to be because he is unintelligent, inexperienced, or haughty. It feels more like he prioritizes the elements of his storytelling in a completely different way. I think some of the criticism is that we expect writing to be creative and right-brained, so when confronted with left-brained creative writing we can easily line up the criticisms, being able to easily isolate differences. Paolini trapped me into expectations that he startled me out of (or yanked from me) in rather elegant ways, in ways that many other books are incapable of doing. I think a good comparison is modern art (or impressionism, for those who do believe modern art is a crock). If I am an avid art fan and I have a particular penchant for realism, I could write 10 articles on how much I dislike Piet Mondrian's "Red, Yellow, and Blue Composition". (or any Monet, for the impressionist example) But for some art experts, the painting is fabulous, and genuinely not because they like tripy paintings or don't understand true art. What I've read about his bad character development and poorly done moralistic preaching doesn't phase me as much, because it wasn't what I started out reading the books to find. What I did find was a well woven tale, with philosophical elements that were well thought out. Some I agreed with, some I didn't, but they were all thought provoking and I enjoyed them. I think Paolini did too, for he clearly spent time developing them. Maybe the characters are "hollow" because they are vehicles for the aspects of the story that prioritized over character development. Just as I cannot see the individual leaves on Monet's tree and the facial features of the people walking by it, I am still astounded by the painting.